“The bombing definitely had a lifelong impact on me”

I was born September 20, 1950, in Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham was probably one of the most segregated cities in the country (there were no black police officers, firefighters, store clerks, bus drivers, bank tellers, store cashiers, etc.), but growing up, segregation didn’t mean a lot, because I lived in an all-black neighborhood, went to an all-black school and attended an all-black church. That was all I knew. I imagine our families did a good job shielding us from discrimination because we rarely came in contact with white people. I do recall when going downtown to the movies, we would have to go around to the back and go up some stairs that took us to the balcony, which was the only place we could sit.

The early 1960s was a very tumultuous time in Birmingham and across the country. The March on Washington had ended with Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. In the spring of 1963, before Easter, protests which had begun in 1962 to desegregate public facilities intensified with a call to boycott downtown stores. Fred Shuttlesworth and some other local leaders called on Dr. Martin Luther King to assist. During the campaign, Dr. King was arrested. This led to his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” speech. This also led to the “Children’s Crusade,” in which students were asked to get involved in the demonstrations, because many adults feared participating due to possible loss of jobs if arrested. I do recall some of the kids getting involved, including one of my classmates and friend Freeman Hrabowski. But I was not allowed to because my father, as a Birmingham Public School teacher, had been threatened not only of losing his job if he participated, but if it became known that children of teachers participated they still may lose their jobs. (more…)

We were saved for a purpose: To tell our story

In March 2025, Floyd Armstrong gave Kids in Birmingham 1963 an oral history interview about growing up in Birmingham, Alabama in “a civil rights family.” As the sons of a barber who was “committed to the struggle,” Floyd and his brother Dwight, as elementary school-age children, marched in the Birmingham Children’s Crusade and were jailed for several days in May 1963. That September, the Armstrong brothers were the first Blacks to integrate an all-white school in the city of Birmingham—Graymont Elementary School. They knew the civil rights leaders personally, including Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the NAACP lawyers who prepared them for the challenges they faced at that school. Just a few days after their historic action, on September 15, 1963, Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and sparking whites to murder two young African American boys. Floyd is certain, he says, that the violence was meant for his family, but that, “We were saved for a purpose: To tell our story.” (more…)

Rocketed by the experience of growing up in Birmingham

Everyone knows the history, knows that Birmingham was aka [also known as] the most segregated city in the nation, knows that Birmingham was aka Bombingham, and if they don’t know the litany of events in 1963 — well, they ought to.

American history is yoked to civil rights history. It’s what we’re founded on, what we have grandly succeeded at and dismally failed at.

Birmingham is not just in the Heart of Dixie, it is smack at the heart of our Great American Paradox, a constant tug of war between civil rights and civil wrongs.

Birmingham was, as has been said, ground zero of the civil rights movement in 1963; it was also ground zero for my coming of age. (more…)

Back to Birmingham, 2023

September 11, 2023

In 1983, as a reporter for The Birmingham News, I wrote several stories looking back at the events of 1963. I worked with other reporters to track down many of the school children who had heeded Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to march in downtown Birmingham. Most of them, like Bernita Roberson Sawyer, had been jailed. She was 14 at the time, not much older than me, and had spent five days in jail. They described what it was like to be in jail as children and recalled how those events had shaped their lives as adults.  In June, I wrote a 20-year retrospective on Gov. George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” at the University of Alabama.  Most of the key figures of that day were still alive, including Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, who was still angry 20 years later about being made to stand in the sweltering sun while Wallace made his stand in the shade.  Then in September, 20 years after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls, I had a front page interview with Chris McNair, the father of one of those girls, Denise. Still bitter about her loss, he talked about making sure her much younger sisters knew the truth of that day. These stories, written in 1983, came on the heels of a broader effort in 1979 by The Birmingham News to examine race relations in Alabama through an award-winning series. We travelled much of Alabama interviewing ordinary and extraordinary people. We wanted to know what had changed….. (more…)

Marching for freedom led to many days in jail

What I remember most about our marching in 1963, was my being jailed after leaving Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, making it to City Hall, and being thrown in the paddy wagon with all guys! Being kept at the Fairgrounds, and later being sent to the County Jail, for taking part in trying to stop one of the police officers from raping one of the girls. I was kept in a sweat box for days upon days, and kept in jail over a month before my family located me! They kept saying I was too young to be there, but they tried to lose me. (more…)